today's AFR " With the world focusing more and more on emissions...

today's AFR

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With the world focusing more and more on emissions and a greener planet, "the Electric Vehicle revolution is fast approaching," UBS analysts, led by Amber MacKinnon, are tipping.
"While electric vehicles made up just 0.8 per cent of new vehicles in 2016, our UBS Evidence Lab project (Chevrolet Bolt tear down) caused a rethink about the penetration rate for electric vehicles," the team wrote in a research note to clients on Thursday.
UBS now forecasts electric vehicle sales to rise to 13.7 per cent of world sales by 2025. The Swiss bank has initiated coverage on Galaxy Resources at "neutral" while slapping "buy" recommendations on Orocobre and Syrah Resources - two of the most shorted stocks in the market.
UBS says Galaxy offers direct operating exposure to the lithium demand growth story through its Mt Cattlin spodumene concentrate mine in WA. "However, with a number of new competitor projects under construction or planned, we see this lithium concentrate price elevation as being short lived and likely to normalise from second half 2018."

Meanwhile, the analysts reckon lithium hopeful Orocobre is one of few new entrants to the market with a producing asset, "which could see it benefit from an interim supply shortfall more readily than its earlier-stage peers."

"Syrah is our preferred listed graphite exposure," UBS says. "Syrah offers pure play and, at present, unlevered exposure to demand growth within the graphite market, generated by the emerging battery and electric vehicle thematic."
The analysts believe Syrah offers a "unique proposition of being both the largest, most advanced and first major new entrant to the flake graphite market."